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New Narnia books

I wonder if anyone has heard anything regarding this item mentioned in this week s Inscriptions newsletter? The estate of author C.S. Lewis has decided to

Message 1 of 4
, May 9, 2001

I wonder if anyone has heard anything regarding this item mentioned in this
week's Inscriptions newsletter?

"The estate of author C.S. Lewis has decided to commission new books based
on the author's Narnia characters. HarperCollins and the CS Lewis Company
are looking for established children's writers who'd like to create new
story lines within the world that began with "The Lion, The Witch and the
Wardrobe."

> I wonder if anyone has heard anything regarding this item mentioned in
this
> week's Inscriptions newsletter?
>
> "The estate of author C.S. Lewis has decided to commission new books based
> on the author's Narnia characters. HarperCollins and the CS Lewis Company
> are looking for established children's writers who'd like to create new
> story lines within the world that began with "The Lion, The Witch and the
> Wardrobe."
>
> Staci
>
This has been listed in LOCUS, and I tend to trust their information. We've
been discussing this on MereLewis. Most of us don't like the idea, but hope
that the new things might be of good quality (and not antithetical to CSL's
worldview). I suspect that it's all a ploy for Narnia dolls, plates,
etc. ---all the other paraphenalia that goes with a fantasy world these
days. Brrr! ---djb.

> The estate of author C. S. Lewis has decided to commission new books based
> on the author's Narnia characters. HarperCollins and the CS Lewis Company
> are looking for established children's writers who'd like to create new
> story lines within the world that began with "The Lion, The Witch and the
> Wardrobe.
>
>

What worries me most is not that these new Narnian books will be inferior as
fiction (which seems pretty likely), nor that they will try to make Narnia PC
(possible, I suppose), nor that they will try to apply some right-wing agenda
to the books (also possible, I suppose), but that this whole decision seems
so blatantly mercenary. I recall reading back in the early '70's that
someone had at some point written a sequel to the Narnia series. (Given that
this book must have been written sometime after Lewis's death in 1963 and
before the early '70's, this would have been in the late '60's.) This person
submitted the book to Lewis's publishers, who checked with Lewis's estate
(still owned by the Gresham brothers and Warren Lewis at that point, although
actually controlled by the trustees Owen Barfield and A. C. Harwood). The
estate simply said that they wouldn't allow it. They made it clear that even
though they may have liked the book that had been submitted, they thought
that the best policy was to reject any attempt to continue the series, no
matter how good.

This policy actually makes a lot of sense to me. Although there have been
some cases where a series was continued after an author's death and the new
books were quite good, there's lots of other cases where the new books were
distinctly mediocre and not in the tradition of the original author at all.
(Can anyone think of any cases where the new books written by another author
after the death of the first author were actually better than the original
series?) Perhaps it makes better sense to simply decline to continue a
series after an author's death, even though there's a chance the new books
might be good.

The reason that this new decision by the estate to now continue the Narnia
series sounds mercenary to me is that it sounds like the estate has simply
calculated the number of years left until the books go out of copyright and
said, "O.K., we've only got X years left to milk these books for everything
we can get. Let's merchandise the heck out of them for these next few years.
Let's sell every tacky Narnia tie-in piece of merchandise we can think of.
Let's create a series of sequels to make more money out of the books." (Can
anyone tell me what year the Narnia books go out of copyright?)

Remember, the C. S. Lewis estate isn't owned by anyone related to Lewis
anymore. In the mid-'70's, Douglas and David Gresham sold the estate to a
company called the C. S. Lewis Company, Ltd. This company is owned by a
holding company with a Dutch name that has an address in Singapore. No one
knows who owns that company. The directors of it are clearly just lawyers
who are figureheads for the real owners. It makes me very edgy anymore to
buy a Lewis book knowing that the royalties will go to some corporation
that's hiding its ownership.

Wendell Wagner

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

David S. Bratman

... Some people consider Ruth Plumly Thompson a better author than L. Frank Baum. I don t, but the existence of her Oz books doesn t seem to me to harm my

Message 4 of 4
, May 12, 2001

>At 12:45 PM 5/12/2001 -0400, Wendell Wagner wrote:

>This policy actually makes a lot of sense to me. Although there have been
>some cases where a series was continued after an author's death and the new
>books were quite good, there's lots of other cases where the new books were
>distinctly mediocre and not in the tradition of the original author at all.
>(Can anyone think of any cases where the new books written by another author
>after the death of the first author were actually better than the original
>series?) Perhaps it makes better sense to simply decline to continue a
>series after an author's death, even though there's a chance the new books
>might be good.

Some people consider Ruth Plumly Thompson a better author than L. Frank
Baum. I don't, but the existence of her Oz books doesn't seem to me to
harm my appreciation of the originals. On the other hand, that could also
be because 1) the Thompson books were already around when I arrived, so I
never had to get used to the idea; 2) Oz is such a genial slapdash
imaginary world, you can't really ruin it. Narnia is considerably more
finely-wrought and hence delicate and susceptible to harm. (And if Oz is 1
on a scale of 10 and Narnia is a 7, Middle-earth is about a 50.)

Is everyone aware there are already "new" Narnia books of a sort
around? I've seen really pointless-looking versions of some of the
original books, stripped-down for beginning readers.

>Remember, the C. S. Lewis estate isn't owned by anyone related to Lewis
>anymore. In the mid-'70's, Douglas and David Gresham sold the estate to a
>company called the C. S. Lewis Company, Ltd. This company is owned by a
>holding company with a Dutch name that has an address in Singapore. No one
>knows who owns that company. The directors of it are clearly just lawyers
>who are figureheads for the real owners. It makes me very edgy anymore to
>buy a Lewis book knowing that the royalties will go to some corporation
>that's hiding its ownership.

I can think of lots of better reasons to be worried about where my money goes.

David Bratman

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